Tate George: Smooth Player, Smooth Talker

As Former UConn Star's Professional Basketball Career Faded, He Focused On Charities And Businesses

As the final second ticked off the clock, Tate George gathered a pass, turned and dropped a 15-foot shot that propelled UConn over Clemson in the NCAA Tournament.

Throughout Connecticut, the buzzer-beating shot became known simply as "The Shot" and Tate George became an icon. In the spring of 1990, there was no bigger sports celebrity in a state starving for a sports celebrity.

"He couldn't go into Henny Penny [convenience store] or 7-Eleven because he would be mobbed. … He was getting bombarded," said Central Connecticut coach Howie Dickenman, an assistant at UConn in 1990.

The Shot changed George's life. He was selected in the first round of the NBA draft by his hometown New Jersey Nets, getting a $4.7 million deal over five years.

But he never lasted that long. He spent three seasons in New Jersey before being let go in 1993. He kicked around in the minor league Continental Basketball Association until he played three more games in the NBA with Milwaukee in 1995, his career finally ending back in the CBA in 1997. He got about $2 million of his NBA money.

All the while, George seemingly was an example of a professional athlete wisely planning for life away from the game. Fresh out of UConn, he created his own charity and became a presence in the Connecticut business community while appearing as a pitchman on local commercials.

Yet as he sat in a Trenton, N.J., courtroom last week, George, 45, was portrayed nationally as a professional athlete who squandered his opportunity and lost his way. He was accused of bilking investors in his real estate firm of more than $2 million in a Ponzi scheme. He was found guilty Monday on four felony counts of federal wire fraud after a half-day of jury deliberations and a three-week trial. He faces six to nine years in federal prison, prosecutors said.

As he took the stand, George was alternately emotional and defiant. He broke down Wednesday when talking about his mentor and investor, Howard Trachtenberg, and he told the court he had lost his reputation. But the next day he tangled with a federal prosecutor and insisted he has done nothing illegal.

It was the Tate George folks in Connecticut met so many years ago — charming, confident and always looking out for himself.

"Tate has always been smooth," Dickenman said. "He knows how to communicate with people. He has a charisma about him where, you like him."

George's relationship with UConn has not endured.

He left the school for the NBA in 1990 and remained visible in the state and somewhat connected to UConn during the 1990s. When his career began to sputter and he joined the CBA, George had a heart-to-heart talk with Jim Calhoun, his former college coach. George told The Courant in 1995 that Calhoun counseled him to put his business interest and charity work — he established The Dream Shot Foundation not long after leaving UConn — aside while he concentrated on basketball.

His basketball career was over two years later, then his contacts with Calhoun and the UConn program grew scarce.

George was absent for Calhoun's alumni charity basketball games in 2002 and 2004, although he appeared in 2006. Calhoun said that he has spoken to George perhaps three times over the past seven or eight years, and that the conversations were superficial.

"I don't know if I've actually sat down and talked to him for about six years, at least," Calhoun said last week. "I really haven't. He's not the only player that that's ever happened to. There's been varying and different reasons. Gerry Besselink, my first captain, lives in Finland and that's the reason. Nadav Henefeld, Doron Sheffer, I've talked to them probably more than I've talked to Tate, even though they live in Israel.

"It varies. I try to stay in touch with all of my players as much as I can. Some go their own way, getting involved, as we all do, in their own lives. Some reappear. I can say, in Tate George's case, I have seen Tate very, very little in the past 10 years."

In George's case, Calhoun didn't view the detachment as anything unusual. George was always confident and seemed to have a plan beyond basketball, and he had a large network of supporters.

So when George left Storrs, it wasn't surprising that he drifted away.

"Tate was a good player for us," Calhoun said. "He had a great family structure, he had friends. He had a support system on the outside, so he wasn't one of those guys you [worried] about. Tate was a good player; he did have a swagger, he had a lot of confidence in himself and he parlayed that into an NBA career."

George's place in UConn history was sealed by The Shot, which advanced the Huskies into the Elite Eight of the tournament. It was something of a coming-out party for the program. Yet his connection to UConn became part of his current trial when another former Husky, Charlie Villanueva, testified that he lost $250,000 in an investment through George into a Bridgeport project that never materialized.